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"Let's get out of here," Juno says. He slips the THEIA Soul in his pocket and slings an arm around—
Around—
"You got it, Boss," Rita says, sounding about as tired as he is.
This is Rita. Of course this is Rita. Juno blinks.
"We probably need to get you to a hospital," Rita says. "You don't look so good."
Juno snorts. That was probably an understatement. His THEIA Soul had listed off an impressive amount of injuries, even for Juno. He sobers quickly.
"You're okay, right?" he asks, peering down at her. He's got an arm around her, but that's only half the reason why he's listing sideways into her. She's leaning into him a little, too, and he's not sure if it's to support his weight or because she needs it. He'd had her at the very end. Pinned her beneath him and tried to convert her. Before he won and pried his Soul off himself.
"I'm all right, Boss," Rita says. She smiles tremulously at him. "Let's go."
There is a woman next to Juno's hospital bed. She's tiny, curled up in one of the uncomfortable visitor's chairs. Juno's jacket is wrapped around her, and she must have been watching a stream before she fell asleep, because it's still playing quietly, casting flashes of color and movement across her face.
Juno should probably be annoyed some stranger has stolen his jacket, but he's honestly too tired. The pain meds they're pumping into him certainly aren't helping him stay awake.
The woman stirs. Shifts. Cracks her eyes open and meets Juno's gaze.
"Time izzit?" she slurs around a yawn.
"You're asking me?" Juno asks, filled with a fond amusement he doesn't understand.
His head hurts.
"Right," the woman says. She grabs her comm and flicks off the stream. She starts going through other things; checking messages maybe? "It's still the middle of the night, Boss. You should go back to sleep."
Juno frowns. "Boss?"
"You're still my boss, Mistah Steel," the woman says.
"No, I," Juno starts. Pause. Squints at her. "Who are you?"
A nurse checks him over, seemingly disinterested in the whole process. "It's a fairly common side effect of some painkillers," they tell the woman still hovering at Juno's bedside. Her eyes are wide and slightly damp. Juno gets a penlight shone in his own eye. He hisses in pain.
"Do you have a head injury you forgot to mention?" the nurse asks.
Technically, yes. Probably. If you count the THEIA Soul as a head injury. He certainly has a bad enough headache. But there's not anything they'll be able to do about that, and Juno doesn't want anyone else screwing around in his brain.
"No," he says. He blinks viciously, trying to clear the spots out of his vision. "Can I go back to sleep now?"
The nurse tucks their penlight away, makes a note on Juno's chart, nods at him, and then takes their leave. Juno lays back down on the bed – carefully, to avoid jostling his injuries.
The woman twists her hands nervously in her lap. She's about to break out into a long worried rant, he just knows. Juno isn't up for that right now. Now that he's laying down again, he's barely clinging to consciousness.
"It's going to be all right, Rita," he says to reassure his secretary. "We'll figure it out in the morning."
He's fallen back asleep before he realizes what he just said.
Juno wakes up and knows who Rita is. At lunch, he looks up from his meal and doesn't remember the name of the woman he's having a conversation with.
His whole body throbs in pain, stretching down his spine and pulsing.
The lapse passes quickly. It leaves Juno shaken.
"Rita," he says. "I think there were side effects from the THEIA Soul."
Juno is released from the hospital. Rita takes him to her apartment.
"Nuh-uh, Boss," she says when he starts to protest. "You haven't been back to your apartment in a month, not since you were missing, so it’s probably a mess!” Juno tries to refute this – he stopped by before heading toward Oldtown and it wasn’t that bad, but Rita cuts him off. “Anyway, you ain't gonna take good care of yourself if I drop you off there. Your arm needs healing, and if you have more memory problems, what're you gonna do? You might not remember to call me, or remember who I am so you can call me, and what if you get in trouble 'cause—"
"All right, you've made your point," Juno groans. His grumbling doesn't stop the warm burst of emotion at the center of his chest.
"Good!" Rita says. "You ain't leaving my sight for the next month, Boss."
"I can hardly wait," Juno says.
He means it.
There are good days and bad days. In general, Juno doesn't like taking strong pain meds, but right now they seem to make things worse, at least as far as his memory goes, so he doesn't use them. Of course, this means that everything hurts, either because of his injuries or because it's painful when he attempts to remember what he's forgetting, which in turn makes him miserable and snappish. He tries to avoid Rita when it's too much for him, when he knows he'll be mean; he's trying to be better, and Rita deserves more than that from him.
Even avoiding the drugs, Juno has holes in his memory. They come and go, shrink and flex. Some days he remembers everything – or thinks he does. Some days Rita mentions something off hand – a stream, a client, a restaurant, a friend – and there's a void where knowledge should be. A void with barbed wire edges.
Occasionally there are innocent reasons for it. Juno doesn't keep track of everything that Rita talks about. He's spent nearly two decades listening to Rita's chatter, and the human mind isn't built to remember all that perfectly.
Other times it's a true absence. Rita mentions a case that Juno's solved, and Juno spends long moments trying to pull together some recollection of it. Rita will hand him the case file, Juno will read it, Juno will have the basics but feel like he's read the file of some other detective—
Then he'll blink, and he'll remember the case. The glittering rings on the client's fingers. The three day long stakeout. Turning right instead of left because Rita forgot, again, to use the thumbs trick.
Mostly, what he forgets is Rita.
He’s a detective. The connection is easy to draw from there: the everyday things he forgets – they're always connected to Rita somehow.
"There was this...protocol. The Emotional Danger Avoidance Protocol," Juno tells Rita. "It didn't want me remembering you, because it knew you were too important. That it wouldn't be able to convince me if I remembered you. I – I forced it to let me – him – remember details. It was easier to track the Target that way..."
Juno trails off. His voice is choked with disgust.
Rita lays a hand over Juno's. It's gritty with salmon snack dust. Juno doesn't pull away.
"I'm real sorry, Boss," she says. "If there had been any other way—"
Juno shakes his head. "You were amazing, Rita," he says. "And you were right. It was the only way."
"I just wish—" Rita says. Her eyes fill with tears. "It's still hurting you, Mistah Steel. It was supposed to be over!"
"It is," Juno says. If he says it enough, maybe eventually they'll both believe it.
Juno takes to keeping a journal of sorts on his comm. He has to get Rita to walk him through setting it up; he knows how to record himself, but Rita is right when she tells him that he needs some way of organizing it if he plans to keep this up long term.
It helps. It also helps that he makes Rita record a message. He keeps forgetting her, so it's important that she set a reminder for him. She helpfully labels it LISTEN IF YOU'VE FORGOTTEN RITA and somehow manages to place colorful sparkles all around it. There's no way that Juno can miss it when he opens his comm. Reminding himself of her is worth the pain.
Sometimes he listens to it just for reassurance. Even if he knows exactly who Rita is.
It's an assurance that she cares.
Juno and Rita spend a lot of time talking. They also spend time working on the case of the mystery occupants of Newtown and the THEIA Souls. Rita thinks he doesn't know, but she kept a copy of the record that listed all the people who had signed off on the THEIA Souls.
They send reports into the PI Registry. Information on the THEIA Souls, its creators, Newtown. Juno isn't surprised that nothing comes of it. He isn't surprised when the records disappear. That's one of the reasons he keeps his Soul rather than turning it in to someone.
Rita is going after the people on that list. Researching them. Probably hacking into their accounts. Juno doesn't stop her, even when he tells Rita that he's giving up on it. He can't keep working on it. He's getting better every day, managing to keep Rita in his mind for longer and longer lengths of time, forgetting other things less, but he can't keep running up against the wall that is the THEIA Souls.
Rita accepts this, but Juno knows she hasn't given up.
Come hell or lethal radiation, Rita is going to track them all down and make them pay.
Honestly, Juno had forgotten about the comm he'd shoved into his safe. It was regular, normal forgetfulness, too. He'd been busy after the Big Guy dropped him off, grabbing only what he'd needed and immediately making his way to Newtown. It's a relief to pull out the comm and know exactly where he got it, what it means, who had given it to him.
We may look backwards only to ensure we have not come this way before.
He stares down at the comm for a long time, considering. Then he goes to Rita's and tells her everything: the Big Guy running surveillance on him. The Free Dome, finally figuring out O'Flaherty, being stranded in the desert. Going to the Cerberus Province, working for Buddy and the Big Guy. Getting his THEIA Spectrum removed, though he glosses over a lot of the details there. Some things are still too personal. Some things still hurt too much to talk about, even with Rita.
After all that, he lays out his plan, such as it is.
Juno wants to go. But he's not going to go without Rita.
"Then we're goin'," Rita says.
And that's that.
Jet Siquliak drives them out into the middle of the desert. A ship lands, and Juno immediately regrets not putting his mask down like he was told. Once he manages to clear the sand out of his eye – he's still working on clearing it out of his lungs – he looks into the open hatch. There's Buddy, there's Vespa, there's a green car with RUBY 7 written on the license plate.
There is a man perched on the hood of the car, staring straight at Juno. He gives a sharp-toothed grin and says, "Hello, Juno. It's been a while."
He is beautiful. He knows Juno. He is a stranger, one who expects Juno to know him in return. He is
he ̬̔i̤͌s̺͡
h̙̻̮̉̆̿e̫̰̺͊̈́̚ ͙i̜s̭̩̿̍̕ͅ
h̷̛̛̪̜͕̭̉͋̒ẻ̸̡̳̣̝͎͍̯̺̮̙̯̒̉̿̆̌͐̕ͅ ̵͇͔̝̓̾̈́̎̄͛̀͑̀͠ỉ̴̛̺̙͉̞́͐̈́͗̈́͝s̵͙̤͉͕͍͔̼͉̺̣͎͌͂͝͝
Juno comes back to himself slowly. He's on his knees in the desert sand. He lost his helmet somewhere; his hands are dug into his hair, pulling in an attempt to stop the pain, or at least have it focused somewhere else. A high-pitched keening is coming out of his throat.
"Boss," someone says. A woman is crouching in front of him, another helmet discarded at her side. She gently pulls Juno's hands away from his head, holds them in her lap. "Boss, do you know who I am?"
Juno thinks he's crying, voice catching in hiccupping sobs. He shakes his head.
"I'm Rita," the woman says. "I'm your secretary. Or I guess I was your secretary. We quit, yanno. We're tryin' something new. You were a detective and now you're not, but we're still in this together. I got your back, Mistah Steel, don't you worry!"
"Rita," Juno rasps, repeating the name he's been given. It sounds familiar. Maybe. The shape of it in his mouth is practiced. "What—what—"
Rita looks unbearably sad. "This happens sometimes, Boss," she says. "You was gettin' better, but—"
"Juno?" another voice tentatively asks.
Juno looks up and sees the man. He slams his eye closed quickly.
"Who are you?" he bites out. He doesn't remember Rita, but she doesn't do this to him, so who is this man?
There's a choked off gasp, the sound that usually accompanies a wound. A bad one. Juno opens his eye despite himself. The man looks gutted, like Juno killed someone in front of him, like a lover had turned a blaster against him. Then his features swirl away, as if Juno's brain is trying to write his face out of his memory even while he's staring straight at him.
Juno leans away from Rita and throws up everything he's eaten in the past week.
(Peter doesn't know how he'd expected Juno to react. The angry part of him wants to hurt Juno; Peter Ransom put Juno as a reference, but he'd never expected that Juno would be joining the crew. He'd turned down Peter because he couldn't leave behind his precious Hyperion City, and now he wants to waltz back into Peter's life, into the life he'd offered Juno?
Peter is angry. He is, however, also a professional, one who can’t afford to turn down this job. He'll work with the crew. He'll work with Juno.
That doesn't mean he has to make it easy for the lady.
He leans against the Ruby 7, meets Juno's eye, greets him, is prepared to smirk at Juno's reaction—
Juno starts screaming.
Peter is running before his mind has caught up. The last time Juno made those kinds of noises, they were miles beneath the Martian surface. The lady has a high pain tolerance; only Miasma and psychic tumors have made him scream like that in Peter's experience, and whatever hit him is at least that strong.
Jet has pulled Juno's helmet off. The lady in question is still screaming, sinking down to the desert sands, curling in on himself.
"Juno, Juno." Peter hears his own panicked voice only distantly. He reaches out to Juno. He can't see any blood, there's no one other than the crew close enough that would have been able to shoot Juno or set something off, so what—
"Back off, Agent Glass!" Juno's secretary snaps at him.
Peter pulls his hand back like he's been burned. He can only stand there, helpless, until the screaming levels off and Rita can talk her boss down the rest of the way.
Her boss, who doesn't recognize her.
Her boss, who can't look at Peter's face for more than a second before he's slammed his eye shut so he won't have to.
Her boss, who Peter thought couldn't hurt him any more than he already had.
"Who are you?"
Peter's heart breaks all over again.
He flees.)
Jet half-carries Juno into the ship and takes him straight to the medbay. The void inside his head throbs.
"What the fuck was that, Steel?" Vespa demands as soon as he's been settled on a cot. She washes her hands with quick efficiency, snapping on a pair of plastic gloves and shoving an empty basin into Juno's hands in case he's sick again. "I've heard people being murdered make less noise than that."
"Who was that man?" Juno asks.
Buddy, who walked in with Rita, shares a glance with Vespa. "That was one of our crew members," Buddy says. "He gave your name as a reference, Juno, so I assumed you would know him. He's currently going by Peter Ransom—"
Pain spikes. The light in the room is abruptly too bright, tinted a sickening red. Somewhere, there's a countdown. Juno presses a hand against his eye and groans.
"Steel," Vespa says. She still sounds impatient, but she might be trying to soften her voice. Maybe. "What hurts?"
"Him," Juno says. "I don't know who he is. He knows me, so he—" He reaches out into the void of memory. "He's—he's—"
he is
WARNING WARNING WARNING
ERROR: EMOTIONAL_DANGER_AVOIDANCE_PROTOCOL INCOMPLETE
CAUTION: FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY, USER: JUNO_STEEL SHOULD AVOID THINKING OF:P̥̫̤̽̿̎͟͝E͍̻͎̼̰̋̔̎͆̂͟Ţ̣͉̜̯̜̺͊͛̽̅̕͝͡E̡̼͙̦̿̀͛̚R̡͕̙̩̼̓̎̉͊̀_N̢̥̑͗Ū͕͡ͅR̨͓͉̻͈̽̋̽͝Ę͖̺̯̱̽͋̄̎̓̚ͅY̼͙̥͉͖͔̺̐͊̓̄̂̀̚Ë̠́V̗̖̒ ͙͕͛̄(͓̦̔̄A̼̩̍̇̍̕͢ͅĻ̳͓͚͇̂͐̑̕͞Ȋ͔̞̯͍̜̺͛͊̔͞͡A͖̅S͓̻̘͂̃:̆͟ ͍͐͢͞R͉̙̪̘̾̈́̐͡E͓̻̖͇̖̥̽̊͌̀̃̕͜͞X_̮̥̬̠̩͊̿̎̇̔͟͢͞G̻̳̗̈́̾̅L̳̙̼͂̋A̪̭̯̍̉̈͜Ş̯̘̜̠̄̊̈͛̕S̮̗̳̾͂̿,͍͈̏̈ ̩̰͑͝͠ͅA̦͝L̩̯͆̍Í͇̝͍̙̝̞̪̑̋̒̋̍A̧̻͘͝S̢̞͉͙̩̖̳̔̃̿̆̊̐̕:͖͉̯̫̻̜͙̍̄̔̆̿̍͝ ̨͇̩͕̲̹͋̾͛̑̀͞D̢̬̭̩̰͚͇̐̔̑̽̄͞U̦͇̇̏K̬͙̰͊͆͆Ę̰̮́̊̑_̼͔̌͋͛̆͜͢R̻̬̘͗̓̚͢͡O̜͆S̯̦͓͕̱̩̐̃͒̅̕E̯͓̪͔͖͋̀̀̎̚, ̼̰͔̓͒͐̿͢A̖L̟̒I͕̩͍̤̦̩̲͑̌̍̃̔̓͞Ǎ̙̠̲̹͉̙̖̓͐̌̍̄̚S̮͙̐͘:̳͚͈̈́̏̚ ̤̻͚́̿̉̏͂͜͜P̮̯̼͈̣̑̇̽͒̉͝ͅE̻̯̔T̢̻̲̝͋͂̚͡E̖̮͍̅̔R̛̯̹̮̬͗̇̏_̧̛̜̳̮̣̐̔̀͋͜R̙̥̭͐̅̈́A̘͒N̡̙̙̯͒̾̄́S͉̗̾̉͐͟O̧͊̿͟͜͡Ḿ̜)͈̖̉̿.
There's blood dripping down into the basin.
"—sake, Steel!" Vespa is swearing at him. She must see something in his expression, because she breaks off to ask, "You back with us?"
Juno nods. Vespa hands him a tissue. He starts wiping at the unexpected nosebleed, until something about the action, about blood on his face, makes the world starting tilting in a way that's not the same as his usual reaction to blood. He stills.
"Don't think about – whatever you were thinking about," Vespa warns him. "Now: what's wrong with you? Your secretary isn't surprised."
Everything hurts. Juno takes a shaky breath. Then another.
"We didn't have any other plan," he says finally. "So we did something stupid. What have you heard about Newtown?"
They all have their own cabins aboard the Carte Blanche, but before Vespa has to leave the medbay, she commands that he spend the night there. Juno has to admit it's a good idea. He wouldn't be able to make it to whatever room they gave him, even if it is a relatively small ship. He's guiltily relieved, because it means he won't run into the man again.
Ransom.
It hurts less when he thinks it this time. It still sends a sharp stab of pain through his mind.
Rita left a while ago to go set up her own room. She brought a lot more with her than Juno did. Juno can't wait to see her room; he's sure she's pinned up endless posters of her favorite streams, and her suitcase has no doubt already exploded clothes everywhere.
Juno pulls out his comm and opens Rita's voice memo. The one he listens to whenever he can't remember her. The one he listens to when he needs her most. He presses play.
"Hiya, Boss," the real Rita says from the doorway, after he's listened to it on loop at least three times.
"Hey, Rita," he says. "...Do you want to watch a stream?"
Juno shuffles sideways, leaving enough room for Rita to climb into the cot and curl up against him. He spreads out the blanket so it covers both of them.
"Any preferences, Mistah Steel?"
"You can choose," Juno says. "Maybe no conspiracies, though."
They watch in silence for a while. Rita seems too caught up in her own thoughts to make her usual commentary. When a woman who can perform two to three intensive tasks at once is too caught in her mind to watch her streams, you know that it's serious. Juno pokes at her side.
"What's wrong?" he asks. He knows he hasn't been the best at asking her those kinds of things in the past.
"I need to ask Mistah Ransom some questions," Rita says.
"About...?" Juno asks leadingly, even if he has a good idea of what. Who.
"You don't gotta tell me everything, Mistah Steel," Rita says. "There's some things that're personal, and a lotta times you're a real private lady. Sometimes too private, cause there are things you should tell me insteada keepin' them all bottled up inside until you get all antsy and mean about it--"
"Rita." She has a point, but she's strayed from whatever the main topic was.
"Right." She takes a breath. "So far as I know, you only met Agent – Mistah Ransom one time before. And you were real cut up when he disappeared, but..." Her face scrunches up.
"But why did the Emotional Danger Avoidance Protocol kick in that strongly?" Juno finishes the thought, and knows the unspoken question that accompanies it: Was it only the one time, or had Juno kept something from Rita? If he had...Ransom is the only one that might know. Whatever connection Juno has with Ransom, Juno doesn't know what it is.
Juno hates the EDA Protocol.
They'd explained the THEIA Souls to Buddy and Vespa. Buddy already knew how bad THEIA products were – she and Jet had been the ones helping him get the Spectrum removed, after all. The Souls were a whole other level of nightmare. Buddy's lips had pressed thin as Juno and Rita kept explaining. Vespa had gotten the relevant information and then ducked out of the room. Juno couldn't blame her.
The Emotional Danger Avoidance Protocol had been both simple and incredibly difficult to describe. Rita had been there, was the one his Soul had forced him to hunt down, and Juno had barely been able to talk about it with her. With Buddy and Vespa, he and Rita ended up discussing it via tag-team; Rita knew enough that she could step in when he couldn't take it anymore, and she'd been the one to hack the THEIA Souls in the first place. She might honestly know more about it than he did.
Not that either of them had landed on a concrete reason for why the Protocol was still lodged in Juno’s brain.
"It's really exactly what it says it is," Rita explained.
"The Soul didn't want its users fighting back, so it sort of...slid everything sideways. Hid it away where it wouldn't effect you." Juno swallowed. "Got rid of important things, important people, until it was fully integrated. By then it wouldn't matter. But while it was setting up--"
"That's enough, dear," Buddy said. If you didn't see her hands clenched, white-knuckled, in the fabric of her pants, she almost looked calm. "I get the picture."
After they finished briefing her on the Souls, Buddy told Juno to get some rest, and then she'd led Rita away to show her her room. Which led them up to now.
Juno has known Rita for over fifteen years. She's his best friend. Even discounting all the work she'd done to weaken the Souls, if there was anyone that he was going to break free of the THEIA for, it would be her. She's been a constant in his life. He loves her, even if he's not always the best at showing it.
Who is Ransom, if seeing his face is enough to violently reboot more vestiges of the THEIA programming still snarled up in his mind, when no one other than Rita has reached that distinction?
"Maybe you should tell me about the first time we met Ransom," Juno says.
Rita twists to look him in the eye. "What if it hurts?"
"Exposure therapy," Juno says flippantly. At Rita's glare, he says, "It already hurts less. I can say his name now, can't I? Maybe it's like you. The more I know about him, the longer I can keep him in my mind, and the less it hurts when I lose him again."
Rita weighs this. "Miss Vespa told you not to think about him," she says doubtfully.
"And I won't think about pink rabbits while I'm at it," Juno says. "If it goes bad, you can call Vespa and we'll scrap the idea, all right? I promise. But – I want to know."
I need to know.
I hurt him.
"All right," Rita says. She pauses the stream, not that either of them were really watching it anyway. "It aaalll started when we got a call from Sasha Wire, 'cause she had a case for you about the Kanagawas and the Mask of Grimpotheuthis..."
There aren't quite the error codes that flashed through Juno's mind when he heard the name Ransom. He doesn't lose himself screaming.
...It's still pretty bad.
He should have made Rita finish telling him about the case. At least he would have known everything before Vespa stormed into the room fit to kill him herself.
It's a good thing the ship is small. It keeps Juno from getting lost the next morning. He probably shouldn't be out of bed, but while Vespa is scary as a medic, she hasn't stabbed him. Yet. As long as he avoids that, Juno's in the clear.
He's hungry, and he's spent enough time in hospitals – or otherwise recovering from injuries – over the past year. He'll pass on spending his time trapped in the medbay, thanks.
It's fairly early in the morning, or whatever passes for morning on a spaceship. Juno hadn't made it late into the ship's night cycle, so he woke up early. Right now, he wants a cup of coffee and some food. He's not picky on what. No one else is in the kitchen/dining area when he pokes his head in, so starts rifling through the cabinets, seeing what's available.
There is so much tea. None of it has caffeine in it.
"Jet," Juno groans, leaning his head against a cabinet door. Every second that passes, he's doubting his chances of finding coffee. He'll be damned if he gives in to drinking decaffeinated tea.
"Whatcha lookin' for, Boss?" Rita asks, popping up beside him.
Juno jumps. "Rita!" he yelps. "Don't do that!"
"I thought you heard me coming," she says. She looks him up and down, a quick check on how he's doing. "Sooo? Whatcha tryin' to find?"
"Coffee," Juno grumbles. "Except this whole cabinet is tea."
"Sure it is, Boss, that's 'cause it's the tea cabinet," Rita says. "Miss Captain Buddy keeps the coffee in another cabinet."
It's the next cabinet, because of course it's the last place Juno checks. Why would the universe make anything easy for him?
"You think you can finish telling me about the case with Agent Glass?" Juno asks, once they're both settled at the table. He manages to say the name without flinching. It still feels like he's cut himself against the sharp edge of the name.
"Nope," Rita says.
"Rita—"
"You said you'd drop it," Rita says severely. "If it hurt you. And it did."
Juno did, in fact, say that. He could push, and Rita might give in. But he promised.
"All right," he sighs.
"Good!" Rita chirps. "I really don't want Miss Vespa to yell at me again. She's kinda scary when she's mad, but maybe a lotta doctors get mad when their patients are hurt, and she only just met you again, Boss, which is a pretty quick pace for gettin' sent to the medbay and she ain't known you for that long but you've spent most of that time injured--"
Juno settles in to listen to Rita talk. He tosses in a few comments here and there, but Rita's awake enough that she can carry herself under her own steam. The other crew members slowly trickle in.
Jet is first. He goes to the tea cabinet and pulls one of many indistinguishable types of tea out. He kept giving Juno tea during the weeks Juno spent recovering after Hanataba's surgery; Juno does not understand the appeal.
Buddy is next, followed by Vespa. The latter makes murder eyes at Juno for daring to leave the medbay. Or so Juno assumes. She might just hate him. He hides behind his coffee mug.
Ransom doesn't show. Out of the corner of his eye, Juno thinks he sees a shape in the kitchen doorway, but by the time he turns to look, Ransom is gone. Juno feels obscurely guilty about that.
"How are you feeling this morning, Juno?" Buddy asks.
"Fine," Juno says. He tries not to sweat under the heavy weight of Vespa's glare. "Sorry about. Everything." Talk about a bad second impression. They're kind of stuck with him now, though. They'd agreed to take him and Rita on.
Which reminds him.
"What exactly is the job here?" he asks. "If...I'm still on the team?"
Yeah, so maybe he's not as blasé about this as he wants to pretend.
"Of course you are," Buddy says briskly. "Vespa, darling, would you go grab Ransom? I believe he's skulking somewhere in the corridors."
Vespa scowls and stands. She has an unsheathed knife in one hand that she points at Juno. "Do not land yourself back in my medbay, Steel."
"It's not like I can control this!" Juno protests, but Vespa has already disappeared out the door.
"I already discussed the plan with Ransom last night, but we have a mission set for this evening," Buddy says. "Originally, the idea was for you and Ransom to take it, as you've worked together in the past." Juno can neither confirm nor deny that. The blinding pain that shot through his head when Rita told him about Agent Glass leans toward confirmation, but it doesn't lend itself to reassurance.
They may have worked together before, but Juno doesn't remember any of that.
"Are you changing the plan, then? Sending him in with someone else?" Juno asks.
"Maybe," Buddy says neutrally. It's about this point that Vespa comes back. Ransom trails in behind her, reluctance evident in every line of his body. He sits silently at the other end of the table, as far away from Juno as he can possibly get. Even beneath the immaculately applied make-up, he seems exhausted. The way he carries his shoulders, the pinched corner of his mouth, the look in his eyes.
Juno doesn't know this man. Juno knows this man well enough to pick out the tiny signs he hides from everyone. The dissonance makes his head hurt.
At least he can look at Ransom now. Juno must have flipped enough switches in his brain trying to brute-force himself into being able to think about Ransom that a portion of the EDA Protocol simply gave up and is letting him have this.
Either that, or this is going to come back and bite Juno in the ass. Even odds.
It's a little strange that Juno recognizes Ransom's exhaustion. The Kanagawa case can't have taken that much time to solve. Still, Juno often pulls long nights, and if they'd worked together again, maybe that's where he saw Ransom's expression so drawn and pale—
Juno hisses and looks away. He's going to start writing down what trains of thought take him too close to his hidden memories of Ransom, he swears. If nothing else, it will give him an outline of the bigger picture.
"Steel."
"'M fine," Juno says stubbornly. He's not bleeding or anything. "The mission?"
Buddy moves on, thankfully. "Nova Zolotov is hosting a gala and auction this evening. One of the items is our target: the Gilded Globe of Reaches Far. We need that map if we're going to get anywhere further with this endeavor, and Zolotov's auction is our best bet. You'll have three hours to complete the heist before the estate's security systems pick up our ship." She pauses. "No crime goes perfectly according to plan. That's what makes it fun. But my criminal strategy calls for a small and close-knit crew. This family meeting—" She gestures around the table. "—is just the first of what will be many others like it. We will eat together, meet together, celebrate together – just like one big illegal family.
"I realize we've already had a somewhat rocky start – don't, Juno," Buddy says, when Juno flinches at that. "That's not meant as an insult. Injuries happen. Plans go awry. That's the life. I bring it up because we need to decide right here and now if you and Ransom will be able to run this heist or if we're partnering up others."
"I can do it," Juno says. He's been hurt worse than this and managed to work cases. Hell, Vespa stabbed him and gave him several inches worth of stitches the first time they met, but he still pulled off the case with Buddy and Jet. In comparison, they're going to an auction? How difficult could it be?
"You already have my answer," Ransom says, quiet. Juno sneaks another glance toward him.
This time, Ransom is the one to look away.
"So," Juno says later that day. He's caught in the doorway to the ship's small lounge. Ransom is sitting on a couch, going through something on his comm, but his head lifts when Juno speaks. He goes still. "If we're going to be working together, I thought I should. You know. Clear the air."
Something flits over Ransom's face too fast for Juno to parse. He doesn't say anything, but his whole body coils tight.
"I just," Juno says. "I mean, I." He blows out a breath. "I'm sorry about yesterday, Ransom. It, uh, it really freaked out Rita the first time, too, but it – seemed like it hurt? You." Juno should have planned this out ahead of time. "Obviously. I – I'm just sorry, I guess, that I don't remember you, when it seems like we were...something."
"Something," Ransom echoes. His fists are clenched in his lap. "Yes, I suppose we were." There's a world of bitterness in those words.
"Maybe I should go," Juno says. He shouldn't have come here. He turns on his heel--
"Juno, stop," Ransom says. Juno turns around.
"I," Ransom says, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. "Am very angry." He sighs. "Was angry. With a lady who shares your face, your everything. But you're not him. You don't remember – me." His voice hitches over that blank space, a wealth of unspoken history. History that's been taken from Juno. That he might never get back. "You don't remember at all, do you? And that hurts, Juno, worse than almost anything else, almost worse than—"
Ransom cuts himself off. He sits there for several moments, simply breathing, his head tipped toward the floor so he doesn't have to see Juno.
"I want to be angry with you. I want so badly to be angry, but you – he – might as well have died, and I'll never get an excuse or explanation or anything. Part of me wants to hate you and him for that," Ransom says. He laughs. That sound belongs on the whole other side of the universe from amusement. "But I suppose I'm still a fool after all."
Juno is glad he's leaning against the doorway, that Ransom isn't looking anywhere near him. It means he can hide the way the floor tilts beneath him and the lounge starts to spin. It hurts.
I suppose I'm still a fool—
A fo͙̊o̅͢ḽ̏ —
B̡̘̗̲͙̾̌́̕͠ṷ͑ṫ͇—̢̖͉̂̿̓̚ͅ
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
Fuck, it h u r t s.
Worse than Glass' name last night. Close, but not quite as bad as hearing Peter Ransom's name the first time. Nowhere near losing himself to the pain when the Carte Blanche landed. And hey, at least this time he doesn't get a nosebleed.
"I can tell Buddy I need to back out," Juno says as steadily as he's able. "If you don't want to work with me."
Ransom shakes his head. "No need for that. I'm perfectly capable to being a professional." Indeed, he's already pulling the vulnerability Juno saw out of his face and posture, tucking it away and placing a mask on instead.
"Right," Juno says awkwardly. And, "Did you want to go over the – go over our cover story? Before tonight."
"We might as well," Ransom says, gesturing to the other end of the couch. "Forgive me for saying so, Juno, but you aren't the best at undercover."
"I'm fine at it," Juno protests weakly as he sits.
...Well. Sit might be a strong word. Fortunately the couch isn't far from the doorway.
"Mm," Ransom says, eyeing him. Juno stubbornly ignores this. "I assume you've already looked over the gala details?"
"Yeah," Juno says. "Rita was going through the security systems again when I left. Trying to make sure that we wouldn't get tagged by the system, making sure our IDs were up to scratch, all that – computer stuff." He waves a hand. There's a reason he leaves all of this to Rita. "I looked over our covers, too, but I figured we should coordinate."
Ransom's mask cracks and wistful amusement slides out. "Of course, Detective."
They spend the next hour making up details about their covers' lives, what isn't covered by what Buddy already gave them, and quizzing each other. Little things, answers to questions they might be asked as small talk. Juno relaxes into Ransom's presence. The pain ebbs.
"We should get ready," Ransom says eventually. "Until then, Detective."
"You know I'm not actually a detective anymore, right?" Juno asks as he stands. He means it to be friendly, teasing.
Instead, he must have struck a nerve. Ransom's expression goes tight again. "No," he says. "I suppose not. You left all that behind you." Juno can almost hear the accusation, one that fills in the blanks of Ransom's reaction to his apology, that answers questions Juno had only halfway started to search for.
You left me behind.
Juno reels away from Ransom.
"...My apologies, Juno," Ransom says. "That. Wasn't fair to you." And then he sweeps out of the room.
Working with Ransom might be harder than Juno thought.
It's all going well at Zolotov's party. They split up once through the doors, Ransom scoping out the Globe and Juno searching for Zolotov. He finds their mark and engages Zolotvna in conversation, and then Juno turns at the press of a hand against his arm and a murmured "Hello, dear," to look at –
A stranger.
"So this must be the mysterious Monsieur Dauphin!" Zolotovna trills, looking the man up and down. Juno takes her moment of distraction to make his own assessment of the man – tailored suit with delicate filigree decorating the corset that matches Juno's elaborate gown, hair neat save for the few strands falling in front of his face, sharp eyes hidden behind smart glasses. Comfortable in Juno's space that doesn't seem like any handsy rando Juno has dealt with before, but Juno has no idea who he is.
He knows where he is, of course he does, Buddy sent him in here so they (they?) can get – can get –
"My love?" the man asks.
Juno blinks, realizing he must have spaced out. The conversation carried on without him, and Zolotovna seems to be waiting for his response.
"I—" Juno stutters, not sure what he's going to say.
"I knew we shouldn't have come," the man says, his voice fussy. He presses a hand against Juno's forehead, obviously feeling for a temperature. "You just got over that bought of the Jovian Flu. Are you feeling dizzy?"
"Only for a moment," Juno says, leaping on this excuse gratefully. He leans into the man's touch.
Zolotovna is pouting. "Madame, you should have told me you were ill!"
Juno shoots the woman a weak smile. "He fusses over me enough," Juno lies. "You don't know the fight it was to get here. But to go to a party hosted by Nova Zolotovna..."
Zolotovna laughs, seemingly quite pleased by this. God, she's an egomaniac. And not the brightest bolt in the blaster, either.
An alert chimes. Zolotovna says, "Well, I really must be going. I'll see you later, Madame! Monsieur." The look she runs over the man before she rushes away is almost indecent; Juno is relieved she's gone, and he isn't even the one she was leering at.
The man's hand has drifted down from Juno's forehead by this point, but he's still standing close. Close enough that he only has to lean over slightly to block the view of anyone trying to read his lips before he asks, "Juno? Are you all right?"
"No," Juno says. They're making an announcement that the auction is about to begin. He grabs the man's hand and starts leading him toward the stage. "Come on, let's just get what we came here for."
Which would be a lot easier to do if Nova Zolotovna didn't outbid them. She lets the bidding go on for a long time, and when it looks like Juno and – and whoever the man is are going to win, she doubles their bid. The final bid is well over the 500 million creds they'd brought with them.
"What," Juno and the man say. They look at each other.
"Call the Captain, we need more money, now," the man hisses. Juno taps at the comms unit in his ear, dialing a number on automatic, and an unknown voice pipes up on the other end.
"Whatcha need, Boss?"
Juno feels a swooping sensation in his stomach. This woman is neither Buddy nor Vespa. On stage, Zolotovna is still calling for anyone to outbid her.
"Boss?"
Juno turns a panicked eye to the man. He mouths, Boss?
The man swears softly. "Her name is Rita," he whispers. "Juno, trust her—"
"Zolotovna bid way over our account," Juno says, finally finding his voice. "We need more creds, now, if we're going to be able to—"
"And sold!" Zolotovna shouts.
"Dammit," Juno says. He hangs up comms. He doesn't know what they're going to do now. They need a new plan.
The man is watching Zolotovna, calculating something. He visibly comes to a decision, shrugs, and says to Juno, with wry amusement, "Looks like we'll have to do this the old fashioned way."
Ransom looks far too pleased with himself as they hop into the Ruby 7. Juno doesn't trust that smile one bit, so he pulls the Globe out of the pockets of his voluminous gown and examines it. He nearly drops it when the thought computes.
Ransom is sitting next to him. Which means the woman on the ship whose voice he hadn't known was Rita.
Shit. By now, he’s used to Rita disappearing from his mind, but with Ransom – he'd thought it was simply a block on his memories. Other than the first moment he'd seen Ransom, when his mind had tried to wipe him while still in his presence, it was only a block. He could comprehend Ransom as a person he knew(ish).
The lapse he had at the gala wiped Rita and Ransom from his mind. If Ransom is getting wiped the same way as Rita, but Juno still can't remember his history with Ransom –
Does that mean things are improving for Juno?
Or declining?
(Buddy leaves his room and Peter sits on his bed. His hands are still shaking.
The Curemother Prime. We're after the Curemother Prime.
There are too many traitorous, hopeful thoughts that loop through his mind at the idea of it. Too much that he's filed away for a long time.
And one thought that pops up out of the black that makes his breath catch in his throat:
Maybe it can help Juno.
There's a knock at his door.
"Come in," Peter calls.
Rita walks in. "Mistah Agent Ransom Glass," she says seriously. "We need to talk."
Peter can't say he didn't see this coming. The only thing he hadn't been sure of was whether it would be Juno or Rita who came after him for answers first. He’s already decided to give them the information they want – within reason, of course.
"You may as well sit," Peter says.
"Thanks, I'm good standin'," Rita says, trying to sound tough. It's sweet.
"This is going to be a long conversation," Peter responds. "Sit."
Rita bounces when she tosses herself down on Peter's bed, narrowing her eyes as she stares at him. Peter allows this, wondering how this conversation will go, wondering if he'll have the chance to ask any of the questions he is turning over in his mind.
The talk he and Juno had had in the Carte Blanche lounge – it had helped Peter, at least a little, but it didn't answer any of his questions, the ones brought up by what he had inferred of the situation. If anything, it had brought up more questions.
It really freaked out Rita the first time, too, Juno said.
What caused this, Juno? What bomb did you lock yourself in with this time?
Whatever it is, it's recurrent. Rita isn't surprised by it anymore, but Peter is certain she's still hurt by it. When Peter accosted her yesterday, Buddy gave Peter very few details of the situation, saying only that Juno was fine and Peter would have to discuss anything further with Juno himself. Or Rita.
Peter has to know. His heart is knotted around a series of thoughts he can’t file away: the way Juno screamed, the tentative olive branch he extended toward a man he saw as a stranger, the glassy look at the gala when he didn’t recognize even Ransom yet still followed his lead, the familiar, beautiful moral outrage bleeding into his expression as he watched Zolotovna—
Once a fool, Peter thinks, and doesn't know he could ever have convinced himself that he'd fallen out of love with Juno Steel.
If Rita wants answers from him, he’ll give them, and he’ll pray he gets answers of his own in return.
Rita, who has come to a decision.
"How'd Mistah Steel lose his eye, Mistah Agent?" Rita asks.
Of all the questions Peter had expected her to lead with, that wasn't one of them.
"What?" falls out of his mouth before he can stop it.
"He moped for months after you escaped the police," Rita says matter-of-factly. "But he was even worse when he came back from – from wherever he was. And he didn't tell me anything, and I know part of it was 'cause he lost his eye and he was real upset about that, but the other part of it musta been 'cause he was all torn up over you again. Right?"
"I can't speak to that time," Peter says delicately. "But – yes. I was there when he lost his eye."
Juno! Have you figured out how to stop the bomb yet?
Juno...your eye--
"How much did he tell you about his cases with the Martian artifacts?"
Rita chews at her lip. "I know he was lookin' into them, and people who had 'em. He was doing a buncha research, reading a buncha articles about them, and oh! There was that case with the Prince of Mars and Mistah Steel ended up in the hospital for a little while after that, but we got the Prince out of jail so really it all worked out in the end, and then we were working that case for Valles Vicky which isn't connected to the Martian stuff except it was right after that case that he disappeared and Ms. Vicky didn't know anything about his disappearance either, except that she put Boss in contact with one of her contacts but she wouldn't give me information on them so all I had to go on was a comms message and I was so worried."
Peter blinks. That was a lot of information at once. "I was the contact," he says. "The thefts Juno was investigating – I was behind them all. Juno got Valles Vicky to call me in, quite fortunately for me, as I needed his help to steal a weapon before my employer could get her hands on it."
"What kind of weapon?"
Peter's lips quirk up in a joyless smile. "A world-killer," he says. At least if you're an Ancient Martian.
They hadn’t known that at the time, however.
"Oh," Rita whispers. "And then...?"
"And then Miasma – my employer – found us," Peter says. He leans against the wall and continues as clinically as he can. "Juno landed himself in the hospital because the Martian pill gave him telepathic abilities via a tumor behind his eye. Miasma was...very interested in what the pill could do."
Flip the card, thief.
Peter clears his throat and skips ahead. "Miasma set off the bomb. Juno was reading Miasma's mind, trying to figure out how to disarm it, when..."
God, he can still so clearly remember the sound of Juno's screams.
"Apparently Martian abilities aren't, ah, terribly compatible with humans." Rita grimaces, but doesn't interrupt. "We kept Miasma distracted until the bomb went off with her sealed in the bunker." With Juno on the wrong side of the door. "Then we left. Got Juno cleaned up at a hospital, and..."
No, he is not sharing any details about that. Fortunately Rita seems to have caught the implications and is also unwilling to talk about it. She's not letting go of the larger topic, though.
"How come Mistah Steel came back alone, then? If you were..." Peter can actually see her put the puzzle pieces together. "Oh, Boss," Rita groans.
"Quite," Peter says.
A few moments of silence pass between them.
"You know, Mistah Steel yelled at me the first time we met. And he fired me at least once a week for the first coupla months I worked for him," Rita says. "Mistah Steel is real bad at letting people care about him, and he gets mean sometimes, and he's my best friend, and he promised he was gonna be better. And he's trying, he really is, he apologizes for stuff now and he tries not to yell and he's better about listening to me, but then he looks at me and doesn't know me and the not-knowing hurts him 'cause it's all tied up together in his brain, and it's my fault. I should have been able to find another way." Rita has drawn her knees up to her chest and is hunched over them.
Peter wets his lips. "May I ask...?"
"Did Captain Buddy not say anything to you?"
"No," Peter says. He inferred a great deal of information from what has been presented to him, but he doesn't know the root cause. He doesn't know what messed with Juno's mind.
"Your story wasn't all that long, Mistah Ransom," Rita says. "But it's a good thing you're sittin' down, 'cause mine is."
Peter has not kept up with Martian news. He left and didn't look back because it hurt too much. So Rita lays out the events of the past two years and Peter feels an unpleasant lurch of emotions at everything he missed. Juno ended up working for a man who gave him a cybernetic eye, a man who was running for mayor and turned out to be running a plot against the whole of Hyperion City.
Peter has an absurd urge to laugh.
It's New Kinshasa all over again.
Except this time instead of simply killing you, they did everything save that.
Rita hesitates when she talks about the Tower, their first attempt to get past the THEIA enSouled people guarding it, and then she explains what her plan was.
Oh, Juno. You self-sacrificing fool.
Much the same way Peter did with Miasma, Rita glosses over details. What she says are only the bare facts: she tricked THEIA!Juno into infecting the Tower and the other Souls. He tracked her down to try and reverse it. He broke free of the mind control. They went to the hospital.
"He woke up in the middle of the night," Rita finishes. "And..."
"He didn't recognize you."
Rita shakes her head. "I dunno why this happened to him. I've been watching everyone else in Newtown, and no one else has been havin' memory troubles. It's only Mistah Steel. It's like – the Emotional Danger Avoidance Protocol didn't shut off when the Soul was removed, but Boss doesn't have a Soul anymore, so it keeps flipping on and off at random times and I don't know how to fix this!"
Peter has the answers to his questions now. It doesn't help him.
All he can do is be a shoulder to cry on. All they can do is mourn together, these two people who love Juno Steel and can't help him.)
Juno is becoming a liability. He was right to be worried after the gala – it's getting worse. It seems like every time he turns around, he's forgetting who Rita or Ransom or both of them are. Then it's always both he forgets. Buddy, Vespa, Jet, they all stay in his mind – though Jet's name slips away on a regular basis – but he can't keep ahold of Rita and Ransom.
The EDA Protocol keeps getting stronger, like it’s making up for starting to resolve itself in Hyperion. Two people blocked by the Protocol are too much strain for an incomplete system struggling to still do its job, but two people give the user too much conflict. It tries desperately to get rid of them, and it pulls energy from Juno to do it.
Juno doesn't trust himself on missions, even if Buddy is still willing to work with him. However, Juno is terrified of being kicked off the ship for not pulling his weight, so he and Buddy manage to work out a compromise. There's no way to predict when his memory will fail, so he's always given redundant information and teammates. The most important parts of the mission are repeated to him away from Rita or Ransom, and he's never assigned a mission with only one of them as back up.
It works. Mostly.
Juno chafes under the restrictions that he himself imposed. He feels helpless. There's nothing he can fight, no way to attack his own mind's betrayal.
Vespa drags him into her medbay for weekly check ups. Juno has to report all his lapses to her so she can keep track. Vespa is always stiffly angry when she talks to him, and Juno never gets over the feeling that she doesn't like him, but weirdly, it doesn't seem like she's resentful about this. Juno would have expected that of anyone who had to put up with his brain's bullshit, much less someone who already dislikes him.
Vespa only makes the mistake of asking about his eye once.
"You were there for it," Juno says, bemused. He'd spent several weeks in Buddy's lighthouse recovering.
"The first time," Vespa says impatiently.
Juno...doesn't know how to answer it. Intellectually, he knows he's missing an eye. Therefore he has to have lost it somehow. Somehow he's never thought about this before.
Vespa hands him a glass of water once he's finished losing his lunch. When Juno pushes against the Protocol, once in a while he'll get flashes of what's trapped behind it. He usually tries to write them down – after he's dealt with whatever the aftereffects of those pushes are. This time he doesn't bother.
The only thing Juno got from that was screaming.
A lot of screaming.
Vespa makes a note on her chart. She keeps track of the aftereffects along with the lapses.
Juno doesn't need her to tell him that those are getting progressively more severe, too.
Juno is walking through the marketplace. Jet is leading the way, heading toward one of the stalls to pick up a piece of equipment for the engines. A man is keeping pace with him, chattering away. His voice is artificially bright. Everything is too bright. It scrapes inside Juno's skull.
They reach the stall, Juno trailing behind them. He stands out of the way of the other marketgoers, closes his eye, and breathes. Whatever it takes to recenter himself, and to cut out some of the stimulus that's making his head throb.
It's raining, which must be part of it. The pressure is making his headache worse. Rain slicks warm and wet down his face.
Except...it wasn't raining a few seconds ago, was it? The sun was shining. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
Juno opens his eye. His fingers, used to brush the rain from his face, are a lurid red.
That can't be good, Juno thinks blankly.
Why is this so horribly familiar? And why does that thought make everything spin around him?
"Juno?" It's the stranger, the one talking with Jet. He's staring at Juno with horror in his eyes. "Juno!"
Juno drops.
There's a woman at his bedside.
Juno doesn't know her.
A sleeping man is curled in a chair, loosely holding Juno's hand.
Juno doesn't know him, either.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
"Rita," Juno rasps.
"Heya, Boss," Rita says. Her eyes are damp and red.
"I brought my Soul with me."
He hadn't wanted to leave it behind. There were millions of them that the residents of Newtown had pulled off, and the designs still existed out there, but it had felt too dangerous to leave behind. It was the only evidence he had. It was proof of what had happened.
Recently, in his lucid hours, he's been turning an idea over and over. It's probably a stupid one. Juno doesn't know anything about computers; there's no guarantee it would work. And Juno is terrified of this idea.
But the EDA Protocol keeps tripping up on itself, reacting to Rita and Ransom and screaming that there's errors because it's incomplete. It’s pulling more and more from Juno to keep running the Protocol.
If they complete the Protocol...
If they give Juno his Soul back, and allow the Protocol to fully integrate...
They can remove it again, like Hanataba's surgery, and maybe this time it will take.
Or Juno will die.
Purposefully messing around with THEIA tech might kill him. It was dangerous to have the Spectrum removed; what's to say that the Soul won't drag him down with it this time?
...Except he's kind of dying anyway. Physically, as his body protests against the flawed Protocol, and otherwise. Every day he doesn't recognize Rita, every flinch Ransom tries to hide from him – it says that their Juno is dying slowly in front of them, and goddammit, Juno isn't ready to give up.
He's just not sure how long he can keep up that resolve when he keeps losing himself.
So a stupid idea has to be better than nothing, right?
"Mistah Steel, we're criminals now," Rita says, after Juno's managed to get out an explanation. "There ain't a Tower for the THEIA to bounce off of, but what's it gonna do once it realizes where we are? What we're doin'? It's all about, you know –" She makes an expansive gesture, which Juno supposes is meant to signify Doing Good.
"Keep me under the whole time," Juno says.
"Okay, well, what about if it wakes you up? It kept pushing you in Old – in Newtown, and what if it remembers what we did? What if it picks up right where it left off?"
"Tie me up, too. This time with restraints I'm not meant to get out of," Juno counters calmly.
"Right, but, but—" Rita is searching for an excuse.
"Rita," Juno says. "We don't have any other plan. There's nothing Vespa can do. This is our best shot."
It's our only shot.
Seems like it keeps coming down to that, with THEIAs. There are never enough options when dealing with them.
"But what if I can't do it, Boss?" Rita asks. Her voice is terribly small. "What if I can't make this work?"
Juno smiles at her. "If there's anyone in the whole universe who can get this to work, it'll be you."
There's a woman hovering nervously behind Vespa as she makes her final checks. Juno left a memo to himself; he'd described the woman in it, in case he couldn't remember her. He has a message for her.
Right before Juno goes under, he tells her, "You're fired."
Juno wakes up slowly. The lights are dimmed in the medbay; it must be the night cycle. He tilts his head to the side.
Rita has a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her comm is in her hands; she must have been watching streams before she fell asleep, just like after the first mess with the Souls.
The door to the medbay swishes open.
Nureyev steps in.
He's holding a tray with a few different cups on it. One of them is steaming softly. He places it down on the bedside table, makes sure that Rita's blanket is still tucked around her, and only then notices that Juno is awake.
"Juno?" Nureyev asks, voice full of tentative hope.
There’s a lot of things they need to talk about. Juno is well aware of that, now that he knows exactly how much he lost that was tied up with Nureyev. Juno owes this man a thousand apologies, owes him truthful conversations about everything he'd forgotten he needed to tell him.
But that can wait for one night.
"Hi, Nureyev," Juno says.